CANTOS Analysis: Canakinumab Doesn’t Stop Prediabetes from Becoming Diabetes

An analysis of a subset of patients from the CANTOS trial suggested that canakinumab does not prevent prediabetes from progressing to diabetes in patients with prediabetes.

A patient cohort consisting of 4,960 patients with prediabetes at the beginning of the CANTOS trial were included in the analysis. The CANTOS study had previously explored the use of canakinumab in patients with a history of myocardial infarction and elevated high-sensitivity C-reactive protein.    

The authors reported that patient blood sugar levels (measured by median hemoglobin A1c levels) had initially declined at the beginning of the study (from 5.8 to 5.6) within the first six months. The effect disappeared soon after, with patients eventually progressing to diabetes at a similar rate as what was observed in the placebo group.   

“The results were surprising, because we demonstrated there was an effect on blood glucose that didn’t translate into a reduced rate of type 2 diabetes diagnosis,” lead author Brendan M. Everett, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston, said about the study results. “It suggests that alternative inflammatory pathways may be more critical to the development of diabetes than inhibition of interleukin-1 beta, which was the specific mechanism we tested in this study.”   

To read more from this CANTOS analysis, click here.